She Donated Part of Her Liver — Then Gave Away a Kidney Too

Meghan Rozema called an organ donation program in Alberta in 2020 with a straightforward plan. She wanted to give one of her kidneys to someone who needed it.

She wasn’t trying to help a relative or a close friend. The mother of three from Sherwood Park wanted to donate to a complete stranger. During the phone call, a staff member asked which organ she wanted to donate.

Meghan was surprised. She hadn’t realized there was another option.

The staff member explained that a healthy person could sometimes donate part of their liver and still donate a kidney later. If Meghan wanted to do both, the liver donation would have to come first.

She went home with something new to think about. Within a few years, Meghan would become the first person in Alberta known to have donated two organs while still alive.

An Idea That Kept Coming Back

Meghan had grown up watching her parents donate blood. As a child, she sometimes went along with them, enjoying the cookies and soup available after their appointments.

When she was old enough, she started donating blood herself. But as she got older and life became busier, she gradually stopped going.

In 2018, she saw a Facebook post about an Alberta man who was searching for a living kidney donor. She didn’t know him, but the story caught her attention.

Until then, Meghan had mostly thought of organ donation as something that happened after a person died. The idea that someone could help another person while still alive stayed with her.

Over the following years, she encountered the subject a few more times. There was an organ donation promotion at a hockey game, and at a barbecue she happened to sit beside someone who had already donated a kidney.

Their conversation helped her understand what was involved. By 2020, Meghan had decided to contact Alberta’s living donor program. She originally intended to donate a kidney, but after learning about liver donation, she began considering whether she could help two people instead of one.

Her husband, Dean, was understandably surprised. Donating one organ was already a major commitment, and Meghan was now talking about going through two separate operations.

But he knew his wife. When she saw someone who needed help, she had a habit of quietly finding something she could do about it.

The First Operation

Before Meghan could become a donor, she had to undergo extensive medical testing. Over approximately three months, doctors examined her health through blood tests, MRI scans, CT imaging, and other assessments. She also met with a social worker and psychiatrist to discuss her decision and make sure she had enough support during recovery.

The process gave Meghan and her family time to understand exactly what she was committing to. Eventually, she was approved to donate part of her liver.

The operation took place in 2021 at the University of Alberta Hospital, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hospital restrictions meant that Dean was the only family member allowed to visit her.

Meghan spent six days in the hospital. She experienced nausea after surgery, which made eating difficult, but she was soon getting out of bed and walking around the ward.

Once she returned home, recovery continued gradually. She started with short walks and worked toward rebuilding her strength.

Within about three months, her liver had nearly grown back to its original size. She was walking longer distances and exercising with light weights again.

The donation had gone to a child Meghan had never met. She would later learn something that made the experience especially emotional: the recipient was a baby who might not have survived long enough to celebrate a first birthday without the transplant.

Meghan thought about that child whenever she looked at the scar on her abdomen. Somewhere, there was a little person growing up because she had been able to help.

She Wasn’t Finished

After the liver operation, Meghan’s family thought she had done more than enough. Dean remembered telling her that she didn’t need to donate another organ. She had already undergone major surgery, and everyone was relieved to see her recovering. But Meghan hadn’t forgotten the kidney donation that started everything.

By 2023, she was preparing to donate again. This time, she hoped to help a family friend who needed a kidney transplant.

Tragically, the woman died before the donation could take place. Meghan decided to continue anyway. She donated her kidney anonymously to another patient, choosing to make the gift in her friend’s memory.

The second operation was easier on her than the first. Meghan spent two days in the hospital and was back to light exercise approximately two weeks later.

She didn’t meet the person who received her kidney. She eventually learned that the recipient was an adult who had been undergoing dialysis for many years. For someone whose life had revolved around dialysis treatments, receiving a working kidney offered the possibility of an entirely different future.

Meghan had now helped two people she had never met, through two separate surgeries.

Alberta’s First Double Living Donor

In September 2026, Alberta Health Services shared Meghan’s story during Living Donation Week. By then, the 45-year-old mother had become the only person in Alberta known to have donated both part of her liver and a kidney while alive. She was also among just a handful of people in Canada to have done so.

Give Life Alberta’s living donor coordinators described her decision as exceptionally rare. The hospital’s transplant team had carefully evaluated both donations, with separate testing, surgery, and recovery periods. Meghan’s family supported her throughout the process. Her story attracted attention because more than 500 people in Alberta were waiting for life-saving organ transplants.

Meghan hoped that sharing her experience would help more people learn about living donation. Before making that first phone call, she hadn’t even known that donating part of her liver was possible.

By 2026, she was back to her regular activities, including exercise and spending time with her children. When people asked about the experience, she tended to describe the interruptions to her life as relatively small compared with what the donations had meant to the recipients.

Two People She May Never Meet

Meghan still doesn’t know the identities of the two people who received her organs. She knows that part of her liver went to a child and that her kidney went to an adult who had spent years on dialysis. She hopes both are doing well and getting to enjoy the lives they had been waiting for.

Her husband has seen how strongly the story affects people. When Dean tells someone what Meghan did, he sometimes finds himself talking to people whose families have experienced serious illness, organ failure, or a transplant. Some are moved to tears.

At home, their three children have watched their mother recover from both operations and return to everyday family life.

And when one of Meghan’s daughters was given a school assignment to write about her hero, she chose her mother.